The Last Minute (41 page)

‘Thank you, Natalia. You are keeping the baby?’

The shift in tone rocks Natalia and she blinks. ‘Yes.’

‘They didn’t make you get rid of it?’

‘They let me come home.’ Now she glances at the floor.

‘Oh, how generous of them.’

Natalia tries to nod but even that simple motion seems beyond her.

‘How many girls did it cost to bring you home?’

She reacts as though I’ve slapped her. I wait. Finally she says: ‘Five.’

‘Including Nelly.’

Natalia can’t look at me; I look at the broken beer bottles on the pavement. ‘My mother got the replacements. She did it for
me.’ Now Natalia raises her face.

Replacements
. The word twists like a knife in my gut. I realize I have bitten the inside of my cheek and I can taste the copper tinge
of my blood.

‘You’re just a schoolteacher. You can’t fight Vadim, he’s greased every palm he needs between here and Istanbul. And if you
cross him Nelly is dead. Get girls to replace her and forget about them.’

‘I know your mother,’ I say. ‘I know where she lives, where she shops, where she likes to drink her wine.’

Natalia blinks, her vapid little mouth works in fright. ‘Leave mama alone, please. Please.’

‘You keep your mouth shut about our little talk. Or when I see Vadim next, I’ll tell him you told me everything. He will regret
his kindness to you then.’

She starts to pull away and I can tell it’s not enough. She will warn Vadim. I grab her arm. ‘And. If you talk to Vadim? I
will kill your mother. I will walk up to her on the street and I will shoot her in the head. It’s more of a kindness than
what you and she did to my sister.’

Can you believe I said that, Sam? I said it. Me, the schoolteacher. And you know I meant it.

My voice convinces. Natalia is pale with terror. I let her go and she stumbles away from the alley. I check my watch. Today
Ivan is going to practice using the knife with me. We work in an abandoned winery a few kilometers from the ragged edge of
town. No one is around to hear the ping of the bullets I put into the targets.

Harp
, Moldova

I find three photos of American girls on the web that look like ID or passport shots. It is at a website for people arrested
for stupid crimes and the girls look attractive but rough, a bit down on luck. I assign three false names to
them and email them to Vadim so he can craft fake passports.

I wait. I go out to the abandoned winery – there are too many of them in Moldova now – and Ivan and I practice what I am going
to do.

‘I wish you would let me help you,’ he says. He is an old gentleman. He lost his leg in Afghanistan during the war, back when
Moldova was Soviet. In recent years, when crime kept skyrocketing in Moldova, he taught me and Nelly both how to defend ourselves:
how to kick, to punch with a fist, to gouge the most vulnerable areas: groin, throat, eye. Now I am taking everything he taught
me before, everything I knew as an athlete, and I am trying to become a soldier in a matter of weeks. He corrects me gently
when I aim the gun, when I draw the knife. This is a crash course and he says, more than once: ‘Girl, I’m only preparing you
to get killed. Please don’t do this. You fail,
tu mori
.’ It means
you die
.

‘What should I do instead?’ I say. ‘Slave up some nice girls?’

‘Go to the police,’ Ivan says, but without much fervor.

I have already been on the computers, searching on the web for options. The United Nations has named Moldova as a critical
point in human trade, with officials in the army, the police, and the government suspected of profiting from the slavery.
Who am I supposed to turn to?

There is no one, I tell Ivan. Just me. And I have thought out my plan.

I was always good at lesson plans, and now I have a lesson for Vadim and the blond mohawk.

Ivan nods and then he tells me again: ‘This is how you
strike with the knife, forward, lunge, no, not down like that, stay steady … ’

Every time I begin to feel afraid I push the fear down. Nelly and I used to wrestle on the bed, and Nelly was all wriggling
knees and elbows, easy to get giggling, and I would have to wrap my arms around Nelly until Nelly stopped laughing and squirming.
So I hold my fear the same way, in a calm, sure grip until the fear is silent.

I hang the sacks two meters high in the dim glow of the abandoned winery. The rough figure of a man lies in black paint on
the rough burlap. Light shines in bars through the worn slats. Ivan watches me work. Light begins to shine in the bullet holes
I put through the painted men.

‘Group of three,’ he says, ‘that’s good. A triangle in the chest. That will put him down.’

I don’t tell him I dream about shooting now, I dream about bullseyes, neatly patterned. He gets the ammo from a friend on
the black market. I am eating up my savings; I don’t want to waste expensive bullets. I still have to pay for my travel. I
think Ivan is paying extra for me to have weapons and I will somehow pay him back. If I live.

When we finish, we catch the bus back into town. Weapons and targets in knapsacks. We look so harmless. But our time has come
to an end.

‘So you will see Vadim tomorrow?’ Ivan asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Will I see you again?’ His voice wavers. ‘What will I tell your aunt and uncle?’

‘You tell them I will be back. With Nelly.’

‘I don’t mean once you’ve … left. I mean if he kills you.’

‘Tell them you weren’t such a good teacher, then.’

I buy Ivan ice cream because he doesn’t drink any more. We stand in the sunlight, him on his crutch, licking at the chocolate
in a wafer cone.

Ready, I think. Ready.

Harp
, Moldova

‘Where are the girls?’ Vadim asks.

No hello. Vadim is a businessman. He has product to move. He is a busy professional with a jam-packed schedule.

Vadim and I stand in the quiet of a small café down from the train station. Natalia told me normally Vadim would meet the
girls somewhere near the station, buy them a tea or coffee and a roll, be charming, show them their passports, offer an advance
on two weeks’ pay, say idle things about the fake hotel in sunny, delightful Greece where their non-existent jobs awaited.
The coffee shop is warm but empty of customers, except for us. Rain hammers down, the sky looks chopped from lead.

‘Olia and Lizaveta are in the ladies’ room. Katerina is not here yet but she will be. She wanted to say goodbye to her grandmother,’
I say. The lie is so easy. But I worry that my voice shakes. I cannot betray myself.

‘You did well. The money?’

I hand him the envelope. He opens it, peels through the bills. The café owner, standing and brewing a fresh pot, does not
look at me or Vadim as he refills my coffee and Vadim carefully counts the cash.

‘Nelly,’ I say.

‘I’ll bring her when I come back from Israel after delivering these three.’

‘You could be lying to me.’

‘I could. But I’m not.’ He cranes his neck toward the back where the restrooms are. Eager to see the girls face to face, to
take the measure of their worth to him, gauge their personalities and beauty, the gleam in their expectant smiles – and see
if they’re suspicious. That above all.

I glance at Vadim’s messenger bag. The flesh trafficker carries a man purse. It doesn’t make me laugh. ‘Do you still have
that DVD of Nelly?’

‘Sure.’ He flicks me a smile and I think: you really do have no soul.

‘I’d like it back. I don’t want it showing up on the internet.’

‘Ah, schoolteacher. So proper. Ha. I wouldn’t put it up on the internet.’ He laughs. ‘That stuff is free nowadays.’

The restroom door opens. He cranes his neck further – past my shoulder. He wants to see what he’s buying.

I fling the hot coffee, kindly just poured into my cup, into his greasy bastard face. He shrieks and totters back in the leaning
chair. Now he’s flat on the tile floor. I stand and I fire the shot down into his knee. I thought long and hard about this
in the quiet temple of the winery, discussing with Ivan how best to proceed. About whether I should kill him with the first
shot or get him to talk. I decided on the knee.

A horrid tatter of a scream erupts from Vadim’s throat. The café owner freezes. Then he tosses me a roll of tape from behind
the counter. I catch it one-handed. The owner walks to the window, puts on the Closed sign, closes all the window
blinds, and he walks out the back, as though he has seen nothing, as though he is deaf to Vadim’s shrieks.

He is Ivan’s cousin and he can keep a secret.

I drag Vadim behind the counter.

He writhes on the ground, red welling from his leg in hot splatters, black fury and pain in his scalded eyes. Rage and fear,
dancing together.

I push the gun up under his chin.

‘Who do you meet in Bucharest?’ I ask.

‘Bitch, I’ll kill you!’ he screams.

‘Give me the name.’

‘You shot me! You shot me!’

‘Give me the name.’ I slide the gun, like a lover’s hand, from his throat to his crotch.

‘Boris! Boris Chavez!’

I search his pockets. Cell phone. Passport. Wallet. The train tickets for him and the three girls.

‘You stole my sister.’

I stare at him, this nothing wrapped in human flesh. For a moment, the fear wins out in his eyes and I feel almost sorry for
him. Then the moment vanishes. He made his choices.

‘
Tu mori
,’ I say.
You die
.

‘You’re dead, bitch! You’re—’ and I fire the bullet into his head. I don’t pause. I don’t think about it.

Do you think I am a bad person, Sam?

I walk out the back of the little café. I might be trembling. I don’t stop to see if I am. I stroll to the train station.
Ivan and his cousin are going to make sure that no one will find Vadim, no one will know.

I walk fast and I board the train and find a place to sit
alone. An old granny perches across the aisle from me and gives me a friendly smile. I nod back. I am such a polite killing
machine. I take a deep breath. I will not falter. I cannot.

As the train pulls out for Chi
inâu (I will change there for the train to Bucharest), I find Boris’s name in the call log
in Vadim’s phone. I go onto MySpace, using the cell phone to connect to the internet. Boris has a page. He is young, biracial,
with a broad smile. He doesn’t look like a slaver. But he is and now I know who to look for at the train station.

Hello, Boris. And, soon enough, goodbye.

Gray smears the sky like spilled paint but the sun has woven its light in patches through the clouds. The air in the train
out of Moldova feels stale and cloying. No one else seems uncomfortable, though. People read their newspapers and eat their
snacks and spin their gossip. I sit far away from everyone, in a corner, watching the countryside unfurl, watching the rain
thin and die.

Ivan told me killing would make me feel funny. I do. Did it change you, Sam, after you first killed? You seem so normal, like
other people, while I feel like the woman who is different, who is marked, who maybe has no shadow. Maybe I breathe differently
now. I wanted to throw up about ten minutes after I put the bullets in Vadim. And every rattle and bump of the train feels
like God thumping at me. But then the weirdness
passes, because I have no choice. I have done this and I will do it again.